Chromanticism

This is my first time using this forum. The piece I'm posting is one I wrote for my composition class. My professor described it as melancholy and hip all at once. It's the first movement in what I would like to be a five movement suite.

I've named it chromanticism because it has a romantic feeling and is also heavily chromatic. It just so happens that those two words can be combined to form a pun! How fun.

I'd appreciate any comments you all may have. Thanks!

-Nathan

Audio Xanga

chromanticism.sib

Here is the score for Chromanticism.

chromanticism.pdf

There are some VERY nice things that you have done in this piece. The harmony, in most places is phenomenal. You have achieved this through chromaticism as you said but you made the melody work with the constantly changing base chord.

There are however several problems with this piece. First of all, it seems to drag a little. The bass doesn't really ever change and you have the same "melody" throughout the piece. You do add in another middle accompaniment but it still remains a little boring. My suggestions is invent a melody that doesn't use the SAME RHYTHM throughout the piece. It gets boring after a while and melodically it's not inventive. Also, I think that you don't necessarily have to have a really chromatic melody as long as the harmonic structure and progression is really chromatic.

So, basically, make the melody more interesting, make the bass a little more interesting and you'll have a great little short.

Nice work though, it proved to be one of the most harmonically interesting pieces I've heard on this forum because most people either use harmonies Mozart could have written (but Mozart could have used them much better) or they tried to do what you have accomplished but fail miserably.

I plan on posting a recording of this (live not rendered) soon. What I looked at with keyboard and score sounds very nice!

"melodically it's not inventive." I disagree. Yeah, any song rendered by a computer is melodically boring. At any rate, we'll see what the end result is. I'll spend some time on it over the next few days and post an mp3 of my interpretion of it.

I plan on posting a recording of this (live not rendered) soon. What I looked at with keyboard and score sounds very nice!

"melodically it's not inventive." I disagree. Yeah, any song rendered by a computer is melodically boring. At any rate, we'll see what the end result is. I'll spend some time on it over the next few days and post an mp3 of my interpretion of it.

It's not totally the computer's playing that makes it boring. It is also the melody itself. The piece being slow will not benefit from a melody that has the same continous ryhthm and pattern for almost its entirety.

"but fail miserably."

Comments like this are one thing I do not like about this site. The "open-ness" of the criticism on these forums stinks alot like American Idol and the ilk. These kinds of comments serve no purpose except to tear people down and is killing our culture. I would suggest that if you don't like something to just say nothing. That's what I do.

"melody that has the same continous ryhthm and pattern for almost its entirety". Well you just summed up 90% of the Baroque era. Besides, this is like a two minute long piece.

There is no "correct" way to write or play music.

I like this very much. However, I agree with J.Br about it being a bit repetative. The melody does need to have a bit more variation.

The "open-ness" of the criticism on these forums

The openess of the criticisms on this forum is why I like it. If you ask your friends whether they like a piece of yours, and they don't, they will usually try to cover it up, to be friendly. But, because people on these forums don't know you, they will tell you the truth about what they think.

this has some great elements, and sounds quite original to me. some comments:

1) with regard to the notation, i think its unnecessary to have slurs that span over so many bars, especially when that is composed of smaller fragments that are grouped with slurs. such notation i believe is appropriate for strings, but even still, not over so bars. perhaps a "legato" at the beginning of the piece would convey the same thing?

other smaller things that caught my attention the first time around - the dim. in bar 5 is over a held chord - not doable on a piano anyway.

bar 13 - it says L.H., but just by inspection - why wouldnt you play that with the right hand? (actually, how can you?)

other smaller things, like all of the tenutos, don't seem necessary

harmonically and melodically, like i said, a lot of inventive ideas. a few specific places strike me as "weak" spots, obviously they are your decisions, and perhaps you're aware of what i'll point out and did it intentionally. i think the end of bar 16 is not convincing enough and doesn't fit with either the previous section or the one to follow. especially the dotted half note G, seems like a very ineffective note to place so much stress on. the chord in bar 19 doesn't seem to fit, at least to me. in bar 20, the middle C and the D have a clash that perhaps can be avoided - that 2nd interval dissonance is not consistent with the rest of the harmony.

those are just some things that really caught my attention. i really do like this piece - for me the more i like it, the more i consider it a serious composition, and therefore the more critiques ill give, so even if you don't agree with what i say, at least take it as a compliment :w00t:

good work

I like it alot!

The harmony is delicious. I like how it's chromatic but it doesn't seem shiftless. The voices move in such a way so as to convince the listener that every note is part of a perfectly natural progression. I also like the section where you sounded a D major triad for a few bars (around bar 22). It felt like a ray of light in a dark place becuase of the constrast with the surrounding chromatic material.

It was a short piece so I didn't think you needed any more contrast. I didn't get bored, I listened it right through and I thought it was very well done.

"but fail miserably."

Comments like this are one thing I do not like about this site. The "open-ness" of the criticism on these forums stinks alot like American Idol and the ilk. These kinds of comments serve no purpose except to tear people down and is killing our culture. I would suggest that if you don't like something to just say nothing. That's what I do.

"melody that has the same continous ryhthm and pattern for almost its entirety". Well you just summed up 90% of the Baroque era. Besides, this is like a two minute long piece.

There is no "correct" way to write or play music.

There are certainly better ways than others. Besides, I complimented him on his interesting use of harmony. What? Am I not allowed to criticize? Everything here is superb! I don't know why we're all not as popular as Beethoven, we're all just as good! If you don't appreciate or listen to someone's criticisms jsut ignore them but that's why we post pieces here, to get criticism and not just compliments all the time.

i agree with johannes. certainly a criticism can be given with good taste and without.

i also wanted to add to my previous post - the piece does flow naturally, and the development is good, from the initial small melody, to its outburst in the beginning, and later the heavy chordal section. with some refinements to the rhythm and to some of the harmony i believe this can be a really great piano piece.

I did not enjoy this piece very much. I hope you take my opinion with a huge pinch of salt - I have a nerve to criticize when in fact I've not really made myself known much to this forum. I couldn't however help feeling that some of your harmonies may not have been meant.

Chromatic 'harmony' implies a harmony that employs non-diatonic notes whilst still conforming to the basic rules of harmonics (in this case, Romantic harmony). Whilst the first page or so of the piece seemed to be doing this to a degree of success, there were plenty of moments where it seemed to me that you were simply adding abnormal notes for the sake of being chromatic. Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick, but I couldn't really understand what you were doing. To me, lots sounded random.

The start sounded like it could have been early 19th-century (almost Beethovenesque) but then bar 8 went off in a direction that seemed inappropriate towards a totally nonsensical cadence point. Then you start off on something in the vein of the 1st movement of the moonlight sonata, only with some rather strange inversions (2nd positions?) and chromaticism that didn't sound 'right.' Then you decided to go off on a Bartok-like frenzy of clashing dissonances for another 3/4s of a page. . . and ended with a cadence that had a root note that to me sounded totally random.

This may have been intentional, but if it was then what you have produced is not romantic chromatic harmony, but dissonance that verges on atonality in places. Maybe it would be worth analysing some romantic chromaticism to see what sort of harmonies are used, so you could emulate them?

Also - someone said about "most people [using] harmony that Mozart could have written". . . . ? Try this one for size. The introduction is sooo cool. http://www.classicalmidi.co.uk/music1/1763wamk465a.mid

You say to take your opinion with a grain of salt, but you had to have known as you were writing it that the person to whom you were directing this "criticism" would at least be a little offended, no matter how much "salt" is involved.

Just because you don't necessarily understand something that someone does does not mean that you need to call it "nonsensical," "abnormal," "strange," and "random." Even if it were atonal, so what? Is that not a type of music? And the title? I'd point out that hackneyed quote from Shakespeare, but we all know what it is. And finally, why would I want to emulate romantic harmonies when it's easier and more fun to develop my own musical voice?

Anyway, thanks for your opinion, I just don't appreciate the way you presented it.

I did not want to offend you. There is a risk when publicizing a work that people may not like it. If you want to reap the compliments which this forum will provide, you have to be prepared for the criticism that may accompany them. I attempted to analyze your composition, and then provided you with honest comments, such as you requested.

Atonal music is not 'random' - neither is it nonsensical. I simply could not understand some of the choices you made with regards harmonic construction. Yes, there were moments of delicious harmony (especially the last system of the first page), and some sort of gershwiny harmonies at the top of the first page, but I didn't get a sense of any overarching style, genre or structure. These are just a few things that I think are essential to a succesful piece.

Clearly, this all boils down to taste and objective judgement. I'm sorry if I offended you, and remind you that other people understood your piece, even if I didn't.